Mira reaches into the hollow. The darkness inside is deeper than the narrow opening should allow, and the sand around it is warm, almost feverish against her wrist. Her fingers close around something smooth — small, oval, lighter than stone but heavier than glass. She draws it out into the light. It is a pendant. Pale as bleached bone, carved in the shape of a closed eye. A thin cord threads through it, its ends resting loose against each other, unknotted, as if waiting for her decision. She turns it over. On the reverse, scratched in a hand she knows with her whole body, is a single character from the old script her mother used for letters she never sent. Mira does not need to translate it. She knows what it means: *find*. The hollow closes without sound. Beneath her knees, the sand lurches — not collapsing, but sinking, slow and deliberate, like a door beginning to open.